THE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AEROSOL SAMPLERS TESTED WITH MONODISPERSE AEROSOLS

Performance requirements are currently being established for instrumen ts used for the particle size-selective sampling of potentially hazard ous aerosols in workplaces. In this paper, two methods for the estimat ion of the sampler performance characteristics bias, imprecision and a ccuracy are described, for aerosol sampler evaluation data obtained fr om experiments carried out with monodisperse test aerosols. Applicatio n of the methods is illustrated using experimental data for two sample r types, the MRE 113A static respirable sampler and the PM-10 ambient aerosol sampler. Where both methods can be applied to the same data, t he estimates obtained using the two methods are in broad agreement. Th e small number of data points obtained in typical monodisperse-aerosol experiments leads to large uncertainties in the estimated performance characteristics.